Opinion by James Wong Wing On

THAT Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew worries about Islamic militancy in Malaysia is actually not news. The Cambridge-educated lawyer whose two-volume personal memoir was censored by the authorities of the People's Republic of China, had already told voters in Singapore a few weeks ago that the rise of PAS (Parti Islam SeMalaysia) in Malaysia would cause 'instability' in the region.

What is really news is that Lee has become a bit wiser, and did not repeat that statement personally during his just-ended visit. It was our own (Malaysian) Defence Minister and Umno vice-president, Najib Tun Razak who conveyed the message to Malaysians through the mass media here.

There is certainly an attempt to improve the technique, but not the substance or essence, of the modus operandi of the old psychological warfare tactic of fear and threats.

However, whether the new technique of indirect communication through indigenous proxy will be productive is a matter of conjecture and dispute. Almost certainly, Lee's opinion on Islamic militancy and PAS cannot influence Malays and Muslims in Malaysia who have made up their minds politically.

Seen in this perspective, one wonders whether it is wise for the Umno vice-president, who retained his Malay/Muslim heartland constituency the last elections by only a slim 241 majority, to be Lee's messenger. After all, it had been Umno and its propagandists who taught the Malays and Muslims in Malaysia to perceive Singapore in a certain way.

Mental worlds

What Lee could possibly achieve is to legitimise Umno's claim that PAS is really 'Taliban' in Malaysia and is plotting to overthrow the 'Western-friendly, progressive and secular' regime of his old friend, Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohammad.

Like it or not, Lee still has many old friends in London and Washington DC who trust him more than the troublesome Dr Mahathir. To a certain extent, Lee's opinion could also influence some non-Malay and non-Muslim Malaysians living in urban areas who live their daily lives in the mental worlds of London, Washington DC, Sydney or Auckland and who still subconsciously hate 'dirty public toilets' in China as well as the 'chaos and turbulence' in Indonesia, India and the Philippines.

Seen from a more historical perspective, it seems that communism and Islamic militancy are not the only two menaces or bogeys for Singapore. 'Chinese chauvinism' too, was once said to be a threat to the republic's security.

Before the last general elections in Singapore, for example, a popular bilingual oppositionist and lawyer, Tang Liong Hoong, was lambasted as being a 'Chinese chauvinist'. Libel and defamation suits were filed against him and Tang escaped to Malaysia and then to that English-speaking liberal democracy, Australia.

In the early 60s, a popular Chinese opposition leader, the late Lim Chin Siong, whom veteran journalist Syed Zahari describes in his recent memoir Dark Clouds at Dawn as a promoter of the Malay language in the predominantly Chinese city-state, was also accused of being a 'Chinese chauvinist' and a communist.

Lim, and Syed Zahari who was alleged to be an Indonesian agent were of course, detained under Singapore's Internal Security Act or its similitude, without trial.

Newspapers banned

But to be, or to be seen as a friend of the West, is also no protection either. Francis Seow, a former Solicitor General of the republic who helped Lee's government to fight militant communists was himself later accused as being a CIA agent and detained under the same security law.

In 1987, some English-speaking lay workers of the Catholic Church in Singapore were also detained without trial for allegedly being 'neo-Marxist because they preached liberation Theology and social justice'.

Later the same year, the government of Dr Mahathir arrested under the Internal Security Act not only Islamic fundamentalists, but also the English-educated secular leader of the parliamentary opposition, Lim Kit Siang, secular Chinese educationists, secular environmentalists and lay workers of Christian churches.

There were 106 of them. That security operation, codenamed Operasi Lallang, also saw three major newspapers being banned under the Printing Presses and Publications Act.

A year later, the government of Dr Mahathir sacked one of most respected secular jurists in Malaysia, Salleh Abbas, who was trained in the Britain like the similarly secular Lee Kuan Yew.

Salleh Abbas is now a elected state councillor in the 'Taliban' government of Terengganu led by the 'mad Mullah', Abdul Hadi Haji Awang.

It is time for both Malaysians and Singaporeans to learn to think critically and bid farewell to feudal or pre-modern caprice. Sanity must prevail on both sides of the Causeway

JAMES WONG WING ON, chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia, is a former Member of Parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew, he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.